Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Nokia Announce Lumia 800 and Lumia 710

Nokia have just announced their two latest top-end smartphones: The Nokia Lumia 800 and Lumia 710. The phones come with Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, courtesy Nokia's recent alliance with Microsoft, and are reportedly going to be launched with three times the marketing budget of any previous Nokia phone.

Let's have a look at both of the two phones, firstly the Nokia 800. This is essentially the Windows Phone version of the incredibly well-received N9, which unfortunately launched with the MeeGo operating system that Nokia announced that they were abandoning. The phone's hardware was top notch though, and it's great to see that it's been made available once again, this time with a properly supported mobile operating system.

The Lumia 800 comes with a 3.7" display, an 8 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and a capacious battery good for 9.5 hours of 3G talk time. The phone also has a dedicated audio co-processor, allowing up to 55 hours of music playback time. The phone is externally the same as the N9, which a shapely curved figure that is 12.1 mm thick and weighs 142 g.

Internally, you'll find average specifications, including 16 GB of internal memory (with no microSD slot), 512 MB of RAM. The processor is expected to be a single core 1.4 GHz affair.

The phone comes in black, blue and pink, and is expected to launch by early November at €420.

The Nokia 710 shares many of these specifications, but has a slightly less unique design. This handset packs a 3.7" ClearBlack display and slightly less internal memory, at 8 GB. The camera is also slightly worse, at 5 megapixels and the battery is less capacious, with just 7 hours 40 minutes of 3G talk time. Elsewhere, both phones pack the same 1.4 GHz processor and graphics chipset.

The Lumia 710 is likewise going to be launched in early November, but will cost significantly less at €270. As the two phones share very similar specifications, it'll be interesting to see if the 800's superior design merits its higher price point.

The announcements were made earlier this morning at Nokia World, Nokia's yearly expo for their latest handsets and software. Nokia also announced two other product lines; the Asha series of low-cost phones for developing markets and the Nokia Purity headset line co-developed with Monster.